The Power of Email Marketing

If your not using email to promote your business, convey information, or encourage your existing clients and patients to take action then your not taking advantage of one of the most effective marketing tools available to you today.

Here are some of the key advantages of reaching your audience through email:

Email allows you to present your message as you want to when you want to present it to your clients. Rather than wait for them to find their way to your website you are initiating the continuation and building of the relationship. You are keeping your business top of mind, which creates additional business and referrals.
Email will drive website traffic. An effective website is a vehicle for presenting the latest information about your business. You can’t assume that your clients are finding their way to your business every day, every week, or every month. A well constructed email Newsletter will bring them to your website and will directly increase your business volume.
Email is the best Return On Investment business generator. Unlike any other advertising vehicle you are able to track who reads your message, what path they follow to and from your message, and what their response is to your message. You are then able to change and massage your message to improve your results.


Building an effective email campaign

What results are you looking for?
Be specific;
I want to increase our monthly sales by 10%.
I want to get 5 new clients each month.
I want to increase this segment of my business by 25%

CREATE A COMMUNICATIONS CALENDAR FOR THE YEAR

I’m going to send out a monthly newsletter to my existing clintel. My staff will gather an email address from each of our existing clients. Our newsletter will contain news in our filed of practice, it will focus on timely product offerings and it will contain three calls to action each month.

BUILD THE “PERFECT” EMAIL

There are proven elements to a successful eNewsletter:
A short compelling subject line – your subject line can increase your open rate by 50%.
Build in links to your website – each story should present s snippet of information with the balance on your website.
Your should contain at least three calls to action; set an appointment, receive a brochure on this product, attend our upcoming seminar.
Coordinate your website with your newsletter
Too often a newsletter is sent out without a supportive website, if your website is not built to achieve your specific goals with calls to action that are easy to activate your newsletter will be just another expenditure witch produce no measurable results. Internet Solutions, Inc. 2009

TEST, Measure Results, TEST, Measure Results TEST, Measure Results!
With each newsletter sent you should be checking your analytics to determine the following:
Your Bounce Rate – how many bad email addresses do you have and who are they.
Your Open Rate – how many of your recipients opened the newsletter and how did this open rate compare with past newsletters.
Your Click Rate – how many followed the path to your website and which articles had the most click throughs.
Your Goal Achievement Rate – how many new clients did you generate, how many appointments did you set, how many referrals were generated.

Build your mailing list
If done right your monthly newsletter will become your best marketing vehicle, so the more people that you are speaking to each month the more your business will grow. Marketing is all about being top of mind when your services are needed, and there is no more effective way to stay top of mind then through a newsletter and a well constructed website.

The Future of Email Marketing
The web is a rapidly changing landscape. The biggest changes in web marketing relates to mobile marketing. How does your audience read your newsletter on that tiny screen on their cell phones? How do you incorporate social networking to make your newsletter accessible to a whole difference subset audience?

What are your options?
You can ignore the development of Internet Marketing.

You can get ahead of the curve and develop an Internet Market.

Click here for your Free Website Analysis

PageRank: Is it important?

PageRank is a web page ranking system developed by Google and named after Larry Page one of Googles co founders. It’s used by Goggles Internet search engine to assign a numerical weighting to each website page on the web. The purpose of this rating is to measure the relative importance of the page within the websites category.

Proper Search Engine Optimization will provide the search engine crawlers with the necessary information to properly catagorize a website. Once a website is properly categorized where that website appears in search is dependent on the relative importance of that website to its web category.

To achieve a high PageRank your website must acquire links to other sites within your category. Each site below has achieved a level of relative importance. Page C, below will have a higher rank than page E, even though it has fewer links; the link that it does have has a much higher level of relevance then the cumulative level of relevance achieve by page E as a result of its multiple links. As a result of page A’s one incoming link and no outgoing links it’s level of relative importance is higher then those pages that have both incoming and outgoing links. Thus reciprocal links are not advisable unless the incoming link has a higher PageRank than your receiving page.






Page Rank runs from NA ( not categorized) then 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest Page Rank. Page Rank is not as important to the success of your website as proper Search Engine Optimization, but it does give you a means of monitoring the relative importance of your website.

On October 14, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true." As of the time of this post Google has not remove the Page Rank tool from it’s Webmaster Tool option available.

Some companies offer to sell high PageRank links to webmasters, but this strategy to build Page Rank should be approached with caution. It can be an effective and viable marketing strategy to buy link advertisements on content pages of quality and relevant sites to drive traffic and increase your link popularity. However, Google has publicly warned that if such sites are discovered to be selling links for the purpose of conferring Page Rank, their links will be devalued.

The Search Engine Results Page, or SERP, is the actual result returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. This is what you see after you enter your search criteria and click on SEARCH. The SERP consists of a list of links to web pages with associated text displaying the pages title, description and URL or web address.


The SERP rank of a web page refers to the placement of the corresponding website link on the SERP, where higher placement means higher SERP rank. The SERP rank of a web page is not only a function of its Page Rank, but depends on a relatively large and continuously adjusted set of factors, commonly referred to by Internet marketers as SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is aimed at achieving the highest possible SERP rank for a website or a set of web pages.
Once SEO is in place, Page Rank is achieved and website traffic is growing the next step is to implement conversion strategies that are designed to turn website visitors into new client of patients.

I choose to think of it like a retail store; you build your store in a good location, your stock your store with the best merchandise at a competitive price, the traffic comes through the door, now you have to make it easy for them to buy from you. The “easy to buy from you” are the conversion strategies.
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Your Customers Words Carry More Weight Than Yours

Testimonials are critical to any website that's marketing professional services.

They provide "social proof," suggests author Robert Cialdini in his insightful social psychology book Influence: Science and Practice. This principle states we determine what's correct by reinforcing our search for what is correct for us. A testimonial is in fact a non personal referral and we all know the best source of new business is a referral. So if referrals are available through testimonials why wouldn’t you have them on every page of your website?

The day of asking your neighbor over the fence for a suggestion as to where you can obtain quality professional services has past. The pace of our society and available technology has replaced the neighbor’s advice with the internet. We regularly read of a website achieving traffic of 9 million visitors a month, this is because people tent to move in mass.

"As a rule, we make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than by acting contrary to it" stated Cialdini. "Usually, when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do.”

The simple truth is you can present the latest technology, all your credentials, your years of experience but a testimonial from someone that is respected can sometimes more effectively persuaded people to take action.

Giving and Receiving Testimonials

It’s easy to grasp the benefit of having someone that you respect place a testimonial on your website, but have you considered tie benefit of giving a testimonial to a website? “Links”
Links are the key to website power on the internet. “He who has the most relevant back-links rises to the top of search.” You can have a perfectly Search Engine Optimized website, but if your competitor has more relevant back-links you’ll never move past them in search. So if your link is constructed properly your testimonial on someone else’s website will create a win-win exchange. It important that you understand the value of one-way links and avoid link mills; both which could cause your website more damage than value.

The web is all about “search” so your testimonial needs to be scanable to achieve maximum impact. Here are some guideline to writing effective testimonials that will convey trust, confidence and credibility.

Make It Identifiable: Use full names, identify the company when applicable, and include a date. John D. is not a full name and creates suspicion rather than credibility.

Keep It Brief: One or two specific points and a long story use your website keywords which will add to your optimization.

Speak To Their Concerns: All professions carry baggage, address that baggage in your testimonials. The baggage is the question that all prospects ask. “Do you have to wait hours to see him?” “Does she take time with you?” “How long has he been in the field?” When people are uncertain, they increasingly look to others to decide how to act.

Speak To Your Market: If your target market is woman, get testimonial from woman, if you’re going after the common man use the common man. Take your queue from the commercials that you see on TV. Cialdini noted the increased use of "average-person-on-the-street" testimonials on TV because advertisers know an effective way to sell a product to ordinary users is to demonstrate other "ordinary" people like and use it.

One Per Page: Don't use a “Testimonial Page” no one wants to read that many and no one will find it. There’s nothing wrong with having a testimonial on every page if it fits your website design.

Let Karma Work For You

Your website is built around you marketing your services yet your current clients and or patients words will carry more weight then your words on your website. Knowing this get in the habit is offering testimonials to those professionals that provide you quality service and let that link come back to you.

What others say about you can carry much more weight than your own words. Arm your website with your clients' words. It's a powerful and economical way to generate trust, credibility and sales.




Kerry J Grinkmeyer
kj@bestofUS.com

BestofUS Internet Marketing Offers Search Engine Optimization and Link Building Services

Search Engine Optimization and Link Building experts generate measurable results for professionals with social media marketing campaigns and one-way link building services.

By focusing on your websites underlying quality, search engine optimization as well as using some creativity to get other websites to link to your website, one-way link building can propel a website to the top of Search. Most Internet marketing campaigns are “here today – done tomorrow efforts,” but BestofUS’s Internet Marketing services combine an optimized website a good “news hook,” in an optimized bolg post, a well-researched list of influential bloggers, and blogger outreach best practices.

In the industry there’s currently a lot of talk about how link-baiting is the best way to build back links to your website. There are several underlying characteristics of link-baiting that that make it a viable and sustainable strategy.
The key is to post a blog and or issue a press release that contains information the sheds a new light of a hot topic. As an example of two of the hottest topics to the American public today are the economy and the current debate around national health care.

Social media marketing campaigns
Let’s assume you’re a Financial Advisor and you have access to the email addresses of 500 of the top financial advisors in the United States.

You send them a survey and ask them questions about their feelings about the economy and the stock market over the next six months. Then you blog your survey results and copy all the leading bloggers in the financial markets. Your blog is part of your website, watch the links build, watch your Google Ranking climb, watch your website traffic spike. You have just established you and your website as one of the most relevant financial websites on the Internet.
If you’re a physician, or a dentist or a chiropractor take the same strategy and apply it to the national health care debate and achieve the same results.

In every profession there’s a “hot topic”, real estate, taxes, health care, the economy; if you have access to the opinions of other professionals like yourself, through an email survey you can create a “news hook” that will propel your website to the top of relevance to your industry on the Internet.

BestofUS Internet Marketing’s home website is BestofUS.com which lists over 65,000 of the best professionals in the United States.

We’ve also identified the 50 most influential bloggers within the ten professions that we list on BestofUS.com to send a release before we post our blogs or press releases.

Building One-Way Links
This type of campaign can generate more then 190 blogs posts. If the information is well documented and presented it can be picked up by news services which produce some of the most valuable relevant links on the Internet. This is the kind of campaign that can result in a Google Home Page Ranking of #4 to #5 and over 200 back links.

SEO and One-Way Link Building Services
If you are interested in learning more about BestofUS Internet Marketing Campaigns, email me and I'll follow-up with a phone call.
Kerry J Grinkmeyer kj@bestofUS.com
www.BestofUS.com

Vietnamese Internet Marketing

I spent the past month in Asia (Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam). I went for a vacation but I got an education, I spent 30 days in China in 2007; the difference between China and these countries is mind boggling. I went to answer some questions that I had about the Vietnam War as well as to gather information for investment purposes. If you’re interested in my observation you can read my blog: http://bestofustravelers.blogspot.com/

I did learn something about marketing that is applicable to the Internet and how you use your website. We stayed in the Indochina Hotel in downtown Hanoi. Each morning when we came out of our hotel, there were 15 in our group, there was a lady at the curb selling a selection of hats, tee-shirts and postcards. She was there when we left in the morning and when we arrived back in the evening. It wasn’t until the second day that I realized that she was also at the temples, monuments and restaurants that we traveled to during the day; the same lady.

So on the third morning I watched her out the back window as we left the hotel and saw that she put her merchandise in the saddlebags of her scooter and followed our van where ever we went, each day she changed her selection of merchandise and varied her outfit so that most of our group didn’t realize what was happening, and each day she made sales.

This Vietnamese lady had identified her prospects, Americans, after I’m sure substantial research and she continued dripping us until we bought for four days until we left Hanoi. I’m sure if she had my email address I’d still be hearing from her.

You have a website, if it’s properly optimized you’re getting visitors, you should be giving them numerous opportunities to leave their email address behind, and you should have an email program in place to drip your message to them at least once a month. Like the lady in Vietnam on her scooter once you’ve identified your best prospects if you’re not providing them an opportunity to buy, they’ll most likely become someone else’s client tomorrow.

Unlike the lady in Vietnam you don’t have to buy a scooter and gasoline and follow your prospects around to put your message in front of them, technology will do that for you, all you need to do is write a valued message that will result in a response.

Do You Need a Blog on Your Website

You’ve heard that one of the ways to improve the traffic to your website is to incorporate a blog. Before you pull out the pen and paper and start penning your first words of wisdom or share your latest piece of knowledge, take a moment and determine just what it is that you are hoping to accomplish and what you have to put in place to for your blog to achieve the results that your looking for.

Let’s start with a question does a blog attached to a company website improve the websites search rankings?

The answer is “Yes” if the blog is done right, and addresses these four issues that will improve a sites ranking whether it be additions through a blog or other parts of the site.

1. The blog provides you a place to regularly add relevant content to your website, and search engines love fresh content and fresh content keeps visitors coming back.


2. A blog provides you and opportunity to encourage back links.


3. A blog will help you build a community around your website. Thorough your blog you will come in contact with other people in your industry, you’ll exchange ideas, you’ll build your reputation, and you’ll develop a following of people who’ll spread the word about your posts through Linked In, Face Book, and Twitter.


4. Through your blog you can set up RSS feeds that will multiply your exposure which often leads to more links, which leads to higher rankings, which leads to more clients.

So, all in all a blog is an excellent part of turning a website into a marketing tool, but there are more decisions that need to be made before you start bloging.

Are you going to host your new blog on the company site or at another domain line Blogspot or Word Press?

I recommend that you host your blog on your company site, that way all the benefits tie directly to your company site; the back-links, the RSS feeds and any email addresses left behind are tied directly to your company site. Besides any blog visitor are only clicks away from where you’re doing business.

Now that the blog is on-site how where does it go and how should it be structured? You have a choice of setting up in its own folder (www.bestofus.com/blog), or a separate subdomain (www.blog.bestofus.com/).

My advice…option#1…in its own folder. This will give you better results with Google search.
Now you need bloging software to write your blog in. I currently have twelve blogs, 10 with Word Press and 2 with Blogspot. I find that I am more comfortable in Word Press and that I can add more features through their plug-ins that help be optimize my blog and build traffic.

Hold on don’t start bloging yet, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your blog. Most these can be achieved through the plug-ins offered through Word Press.

Proper structure of your URLs/Permalinks. Each post has its own identity, some use numbers in sequence. It should look like this: (www.bestofus.com/blog/DoYouNeedaBlogOnYourWebsite)

Optimize your description, title, and Alt tags. Treat each post as another web page so that it can be easily categorized and ranked by the search crawlers.

Create a Sitemap. You need to build this and you’ll find a plug-in to help you get it in place.
Directory of your best posts. Place this directory on your Side Bar so the readers can easily find the best you have to offer.

Link to your Social Media. You should have a snippet of any new posts appear on your Linked In, and Face book pages there are a number of services that can do this for you.

You should now be ready to start bloging. You’ll want to adapt the same promotional, link building, visitor to client conversion and SEO strategies that you have in place for your company site into your blog.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy bloging, the blog will build traffic to your website and you’ll have to turn new clients away. Remember the Internet is relatively new and it is growing each day, it you jump in now you’ll be light years ahead of your competition and as it changes you’ll be in a position to adapt. The Internet is the best marketing tool you have ever been presented, don’t ignore it any longer.

How to Compare Your Online Success with Your Competition

The internet is a level playing field. This means that every company has an equal opportunity to get their message found by potential customers online. In the retail world if you’re located in the ‘big mall’ you have a competitive advantage over your competition, not true on the Internet. But that also means that your site is competing head to head with your business competitors for traffic in search engines and social media. Your competitors might be generating a lot of traffic from keywords, linking sites and Search Engine Optimization that you haven't implemented. It’s easy enough, through Google Keywords, to find out how many people are searching for businesses like yours in your city every month, and you know how much business is coming in through your website. So if your website isn’t bringing you new business each month what do you have to change to get your website working for you? In this article I’m going to tell you how to find out how your website is performing compared to your competition.

How does your page ranking, inbound links & search engine rank compare to your competitors' websites?

What keywords is your competitor using to optimize his pages and achieve better results?

How does your Internet penetration compare to your competitors?

How does your page ranking, inbound links & search engine rank compare to your competitors' websites?
You need to first install a Google page rank bar onto your browser. This is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to see the page ranking of every website that you visit. It also allows you to see how many relevant links Google recognizes and when the page was last audited by Google. Follow the instructions at this link to install the Google Rank Bar. (http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/index.html)

Once you have it installed it will show you a Page Ranking of NR (not rated) to 10. Click on the arrow to the right of the bar to find relevant links and when the page was last Cached or audited. This will give you an easy way to see how your site compares in the basics.

To compare Search Engine rankings go to www.seocentro.com. In the second box on the left side, SEO Tools, click on Rank Checker. Now enter your keyword (your profession and your city), and your domain name and your top competitors domain name. Submit

This will give you your search page rank on Google, Yahoo and Bing for the key words that you entered. The first listings will be for the map insert which Google offers, followed by the rankings of the WebPages.

What keywords is competitor using to optimize his pages and achieving better results?

Now you know who’s beating you at Internet marketing, now let’s find out how their doing it. Staying in SEOCentro, in the SEO Tools box go to Keyword Analyzer. Enter the same Keywords you used above and your domain name. These results will show you how efficiently you are using these keywords.

Now do the same thing with your competitors’ domain name.

This exercise should tell you whether your website is optimized or not; you can have a well optimized website and still not appear in the top of search if the competition has established a better penetration on the Internet. But you can’t get to the top of search no matter what your Internet penetration without good SEO.

How does your Internet penetration compare to your competitors?

Internet penetration is all about back-links and text links. Still on SEOCentro, click on Link Popularity. Enter your information and Submit. This is humbling, here your going to see all the work that goes into making a top producing website. You’ll see how many links you have over the Internet and how many the various services recognize as relevant.

If you’ve entered your competitor’s domain you’ll see how many relevant links you’re going to have to produce to compete with them for top search rankings.

Let’s look at the real world to see if getting to the top of search is worth the cost and effort. Let’s assume you’re a Personal Injury Lawyer in Boston; Google Keywords tells me that Google had 3,280 matching searches in July. Based on Google doing 67% of all search we can assume that there were 4,895 total searches last month for Personal Injury Lawyer in Boston.

Joel H. Schwartz’s website appears on the top of Google Search, he has a Page Rank of 3 and he has 85 relevant links. Joel had 4,378 visitors to his website in July; 3,333 unique visits (up from 221 in February). 34% of his search visits came from the keywords personal injury lawyer, 21.75% from car accident and 16.89% from slip and fall. Joel also got some of his traffic from his links and direct traffic.

If you’re really interested run the comparison on www.alicata.com . Arthur F. Licata’s site has a page rank of 3 and 141 relevant links (56 more then Joel) but appears on page 9 of Google Search. Do you know why?

Compare this to your business; where do you appear on search and how long does it take you get your message in front of 3,333 interested prospects?

If you’re a professional and you’d like to turn your website into a marketing tool, maybe we should talk.


Kerry J. Grinkmeyer
kj@bestofus.com
205 956 4329

How to Set and Monitor Website Goals

To often businesses build a website with no real goals and objectives thought out for the site. Good goals and objectives add to the value of your business, are based on reality, and can be measured. The measuring part is the part that is most often overlooked, yet how can you know if your site is adding value to your business if you have no means of measuring its productivity and you have no one monitoring it. Here are some possible objectives for a well designed website:



• Generate names and contact information of potential clients or patients.
• Provide information for existing clients or patients.
• Disseminate timely information about your business and or industry while establishing you as an expert in your field.
• Distribute our Newsletter over the Internet thus eliminate the cost of printing and postage.
• Generate referrals by providing our Newsletter readers a means of forwarding it to a friend.


A website that doesn’t have specific objectives that are measurable suggests that the site was not well planed during its development process. This often happens when the parties involved in the development process do not have a full understanding of Internet Marketing.

Once you have a clear understand of how your website fits into your overall business plan you will need to incorporate these objectives into your site. It normally doesn’t mean a full rework of the site. Much of what needs to be added is software off the shelf that can be incorporated into your existing site.

With the objectives in place it’s important that you have a means of measuring the level of success that each objective is having. This is where you will turn to your website analytics. Your analytics watches over your website and tells you how many visitors your site had over a specified period of time, how they arrived at your site, and what they did while they were at your site.

As an example your site had 200 visitors last week; here’s some of the data your analytics will give you.


• 56% arrived from search, 20% direct (typed in your URL) and 24% by referral (from a link that you established with another website).
• The average time spent on your site was 2 minutes 43 seconds
• Your bounce rate was 33% (came and went didn’t spend any time)
• 20% of your visitors were return visitors and 80% were first time visitors.
• 23 visitors followed the link to your latest Newsletter, 3 became new registrants
• 15 visitors looked at the informational brochure you're offering, 6 visitors signed up to have it sent to them
• 12 visitors looked at the information on your upcoming seminar, 5 signed up to attend.

This is just a sampling of some of the information that is available; so what does this tell you.


• Your site is well Search Engine Optimized, your getting decent search traffic; you have a good link base that is feeding you traffic; you need to work on getting your website top of mind with your existing clients or patients. You need to build a mailing list.
• You need to beef-up your current content to get your onsite time higher.
• 33% of your visitors didn’t find what they were looking for; you need to dig deeper, did they come from Search, Direct, or Referral. The answerer will tell you what you need to change.
• You need to give your Newsletter, Brochure and Seminar better billing

A well structured website with specific measurable objectives that is properly monitored and maintained can be the most valuable marketing tool that you posses, but the truth is most small and medium businesses spend a lot of money building a pretty website get it up and running then basically forget about it because it doesn’t bring client through the door or make the phone ring. If this sounds like you, go to www.wealthenhancement.com; it’s a site with clear measurable objective, they offer you five opportunities to make connection with them on the landing page. Their website objective is “to generate new business”. Type Financial Advisor Minneapolis in your Google Search Bar, and see if you can find them. This is not by accident.

If you need help turning your website into a marketing tool we should talk.

Kerry Grinkmeyer
The Best of the US
kj@BestofUS.com
205 956 4329

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Website

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

In other words who's coming to your site, how did they get there, what did they do while they were there? Is your website achieving its goals?

The ultimate goal of web analytics is to improve the structure and layout of your site and its functioning as a marketing tool. To do this, you need to know what's working on your site and what's not. And if something isn't working, you need to understand why not and how you should begin optimizing it. In other words, you need to come away from your analysis with a list of to-do's.

Most users of website analytics read the reports without knowing what to do with them. For most people, reports seem to satisfy curiosity, "How many visitors did the site have yesterday?", more than provoke any kind of action.

Having clean data and actionable reports is one thing, but it is another matter altogether to know how to read them and respond. This articles will help you determine what to look for in your reports and how to relate what you find to your on site goals.

Start with a blank piece of paper and your computer down. Now, ask yourself, "Why did I have my website built?" "What do I want my website to add to my business plan?" "What has to happen for a site visit to be successful?" "What constitutes a visit a failure?"

Starting from this point, begin to create a list of questions. Don't even think about what reports are available yet. Just list the questions you need answers to.

Questions should be focused on your business goals and customer experiences. Rather than asking "How many visitors did we have last week?", ask "How long did the average visitor spend on the site and what pages did they view?" The first question will give you a single metric, the second will take into account the context of the pages, the keywords used to get to the page, the goals of the site, etc. In most cases your goal will be for the visitor to leave his contact information behind. Analytics should tell you what you need to change in order to improve your conversion ratio. You'll find that worthwhile questions will probably require multiple reports to answer.

Your list of questions might be short. That's okay. Your questions will change and grow in complexity as you realize the potential of your site as a marketing tool and the power of the analytics.

In practice, you should be creating lists of questions regularly. Maybe weekly. And as you answer questions, make changes and improve results you will likely replace them with other, more refined questions.

As you complete your list of questions, you still should be logged out of your analytics site. Now comes the important part, and you shouldn't let the graphs and available reports sidetrack you yet.

Now it's time to look at that list of questions and think about what elements would provide answers or clues.

It may be best to think about it anecdotally. For example, if you want to know which conversion (visitor to prospect) strategies are not performing well enough, you might imagine a potential visitor clicking on your Newsletter sign-up page. If they leave immediately,(time on page) that probably means something went wrong. It could be a disconnect between what you were offering and what your were asking for, (too much contact information). If they stay on the site but go to a different area than you expected, it may represent a failure of the conversion strategy to communicate the intended message. Think of all the scenarios that would indicate a failure.

It's important to remember here what is the goal: "To get the visitor to leave his or her contact information."

Now is the time to start matching up indicators with reports. This will vary with each site. You may decide for your site that a mixture of time on site, time on page, bounce rate and conversion rate give you an indication of the success of a particular strategy. Determining how to weight these metrics will depend on the site and the marketing goals.

As an example you might find that by beefing up current content you get more repeat visitors who are using your site as a library but your conversion ratio is going down, thus you may want to only offer snippets of content in a newsletter format and require a sign-up for a full read. You'll see this strategy used by the Wall Street Journal.

After analyzing your reports and building your strategies in this manner, you should be able to create a to-do list. If you can't, it wasn't a very useful exercise. The to-do list could include items like "Perform Brochure Mailing testing on landing page", "Offer a luncheon seminar on a hot topic", "Use more current topics on email newsletters", etc.

As you optimize your site and strategies, your questions will change. They will become more refined. As one area is perfected, other areas in need of your attention will surface. This should be a cycle of asking, optimizing and testing until your site is finally so perfect that every visitor who comes to your site can't help but ask to become your client or patient.

You are probably saying to yourself, "I don't have the time to do all this." If that's the case we may need to talk about your website and the goals that you that you would like to achieve with your website.

Kerry J. Grinkmeyer
The Best of the US
kj@BestofUS.com

How Do You Market Your Business on the Internet

If you want to turn your website into a Marketing Tool these are questions that you need to be addressing, but before you do that it’s important that you gain some understanding of how the Internet works.

Imagine a huge spider crawling through out the Internet; its job is to determine what each website is all about and which are the most important. After a while this spider figures out that with over 300 billion websites he’s going to have to organize them in some manner. He decides to create categories; Financial, Medical, Shopping, etc. The spider looks for keywords, examines the site title, it’s description and its page content.

Once he gets his 300 million sites categorized he has to come up with a system of determining which of the sites in each category are the most important to the category and to the Internet overall. So he decides to give a site points for other sites linking back to it, more points for having other sites referring back to it in its content, and more points if the content on the original is updated on a regular basis thus keeping current on the subject matter of the category.

Those sites with the current content, and most relevant back links are then ranked highest and appear highest in search. That’s a simple explanation of how Internet search works.

If you build a beautiful website to promote your business and it’s not appearing on the first page of search, it’s like building a beautiful billboard and keeping it in your basement.

To find out where your website is living, type your business and location in your search bar (Orthodontist Omaha), just like someone who needed your services would do. There are usually ten listings on each page; are you on the first page? Now ask yourself, when you’re searching how deep do you go? If you’re not on the first page 80% of the searchers will not find you.

If you’re an Orthodontist in Omaha there were 1290 searches last month that you could be just what the searcher was looking for; that’s over 15,000 information searchers a year. How important to your business is it that you’re on the first page? You could pay for one of those “Sponsored Ads” on the top and right hand side of the page, which would put you on the top.

Did you see that map on the top of the page with pinpoints showing where your competitions offices are located; are you in that picture?

Do you currently know how many visitors come to your website each day and how they found you and how long they stayed? If someone does come to your website is it easy for them to get information from you? You know, get on your newsletter mailing list, or sign up for your next seminar; or do you offer anything like that on your website? Have you considered using your website to market your business?

If you could hire or train an employee to get you to the top of the page and keep you there, as well as help you turn your website into a marketing tool what would you be willing to pay them a year?

It’s all about Return on Investment (ROI); what is a new client or patient worth to you a year? How many new clients would your website have to bring on to justify a full time employee? Would you be better hiring a professional to do the work for you?

It’s easy to find out how many searches there were last month for your profession in your city, and a professional in the field of Search Engine Optimization can help you get your website to the top of the page. Today you’re probably going to find national companies, local listings, and general information site competing for first page positions. It’s not hard to displace them on a local level. If you do find one of your competitors up there you’re behind in the fastest growing segment of business marketing. Check their Google Page Ranking if it’s 5 or above you’ve got a steep hill to climb, if it’s 2 or below you can challenge them in short order.

As you’re a professional in your field you need a professional if you want to add Internet Marketing as an effective tool to market your business. Building a website is step one, build traffic to your website is step two, converting that traffic into prospect is step three, and converting those prospects into client is step four.

If you'd like to learn how I built a product and marketed it over the internet, I writing a blog on how I wrote, illustrated, manufactured and marketed a children's book, The Christmas Web - A Family Tradition.


Kerry Grinkmeyer founded BestofUS.com a web listing of the best of ten professions in the United States. He works with his listed professional to assist them in marketing their business over the Internet. You can apply to be listed on BestofUS.com at Apply To Be Listed

6 Steps To Build Your Business Using the Internet

I’ve spent the past three years building and promoting BestofUS.com and SmartestofUS.com; you as a listed professional on BestofUS have hopefully benefited from the sites rise from nothing to a Google Page Ranking of 4. I’d like to share what I’ve learned and offer you some assistance in improving your presence on the Internet while helping you grow your business in your community. I’m calling it our Platinum Listing Program.

A website first needs traffic, that requires that your website appears on the first page of Google Search or any of the other major search engines. To get a first page listing requires that your site be structured and linked so that it's easily categorized by the crawlers and it's ranked as an important page within its category. This requires Search Engine Optimization, an ongoing process of controlling keywords, links and content. This being done, the second step is to build conversion methods into your site so that the site visitor can easily establish a relationship with you and your firm. If your websites not bringing you business every month why did you build it? If you'd like to discuss how we can help turn your website into your second best marketing tool drop me an email.

Kerry kj@bestofus.com

Search Engine Optimization – Best of U. S. will analysis your website for optimization of keywords, title and description for proper categorization of your website. Our SEO specialist will evaluate your website and give you a report making suggestions on how to better optimize your site. Your account manager will submit your website to qualified, quality web directories with high Google Page Rankings using an organic, methodical approach to achieve the highest possible results for your website.

Upgrade Listing – Your listing will be expanded to include all your contact information, a full bio and web link which will present you and your business as the premier professional in your city.

Press Release Distribution – Your account manager will distribute, with your assistance, four press releases to your local newspaper, and business journal. The first will be a press release announcing your inclusion in 2009 Best of U.S.

Article Marketing – Best of U.S has established professional blogs (one for each of our listed professions). You can submit and have published six articles per year of 400 to 500 words on any area relative to your profession; on the bottom of the article you will include a bio and instructions directing the reader to your website to learn more about your services. Your account manager will also place your article on our network of 10 article publishing websites with page rankings of 4 to 6. These publishing websites will publish your articles and make them available to distributors of email newsletters who are hungry for quality content. Your original articles and expertise may be exposed to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, as well as establishing quality links back to your website.

Email Marketing - Our email marketing center makes it easy for you to build stronger relationships with your customers and prospects by regularly sending them professional-looking newsletters. You don't need any technical expertise to use our point-and-click interface. You'll be able to send up to 5,000 emails per month (more if you need) to your client and prospect lists. You can also have people sign up for your newsletter from your website; you'll get HTML code that you can use or we can set it up for you.

Lead Generation –BestofUS.com visitors will view your expanded BestofUS listing and will be able to request one, two or three forms of contact from you and your firm.
When the visitor checks this option you will be notified with all their contact information. All visitors to BestofUS.com will be preregistered with an email conformation prior to entering the site thus eliminating bogus leads and any form of spam.

If you'd like more information to the Platinum Listing Program by BestofUS.com contact me at kj@bestofus.com

Our BestofUS Blogs:

http://www.bestdoctorsofus.com/

http://www.bestdentistsofus.com/

http://www.bestfinancialadvisorsofus.com/

http://www.bestlawyersofus.com/

http://www.bestaccountantsofus.com/

http://www.bestphysicalterapistsofus.com/

http://www.beatchiropractorsofus.com/

http://www.bestrealestateagentsofus.com/

http://www.bestveterinariansofus.com/

http://www.bestmortgagebrokersofus.com/

Four Steps to Finding the Best Doctors

Illness and accidents change quality of life. Recovery is all about regaining quality of life. Our ability to regain our quality of life is dependent on the quality of medical care that we receive and our ability and desire to recover. Ability and desire to recover are under our control, for the most part, the quality of medical care that we receive is in the hands of those that we choose to give us care.

In the past, we didn't have the ability to choose our care givers with any level of authority because of the lack of information that was available. We depended on the recommendations of friend, relatives and other care givers. With the introduction and expansion of the Internet our ability to make informed decisions about the quality of our health care has changed. We can now check a doctors standing with the American Medical Association, we can check on this level of education, we can check on their disciplinary records.

The medical field is changing so fast that if our doctors are not pursuing their education on a continuing basis we are virtually guaranteed that they are working without all the information relative to our condition, and thus we are getting something less then the best medical care. In the past, the likelihood of our full recovery was left to the luck of the draw; if we got a knowledgeable doctor we recovered, if we didn't we suffered and often died.

The burden thus falls to the patient to search for the best doctor and medical facility that is most qualified to provide the care that we need. Here are the steps that you should take in finding the best care for your needs.
Research your condition. This involves knowing what's ailing you. Go to Google and search your condition with the proper medical terms, and gain a full understand of what you have. This will arm you so that you can ask intelligent questions.
Ask informed questions. What is your experience with my condition? How often have you preformed this operation? What level of research have you done on my condition? Have you written any papers or given any presentations on my condition? You might think these questions are threatening, but who do you want providing you care the expert or the practitioner? If you had a valuable antique car; who would you want to work on your car?
Locate the expert. Again on Google read what the expert has written on your condition and use this information to determine if your doctor is the best doctor for your recovery. If not, contact the expert and ask him or her to review your case. The expert isn't going to be looking for business; they'll give you a true assessment of your condition and advise you on how to proceed.
Control your destiny. If your local doctor objects to your proactive action you probably have the wrong doctor. It's your life, it's your body, and ultimately it is only you that will have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Everyone else will move on.


If you'd like a starting point for finding the best doctors in your community start your search on www.BestofUS.com. This website lists the best of class in ten professions, doctors, lawyers, dentists, financial advisors, chiropractors, physical therapists, accountants, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and veterinarians. Best of the United States LLC searches for the best educated, most peer recognized, and most industry recognized authorities is each of the professions. Listed professionals cannot pay to be included on the BestofUS listing. BestofUS.com is the most complete listing of the best professionals on the Internet.

We're Stopping U.S. Drug Trade Next Monday

The U.S. drug trade, whether it be from Columbia, Mexico, or the mountains of California are all about one thing and that is money; specifically, the U.S. dollar. We spend over $3 billion every year in our attempt to stop drugs from coming into our country and the trade continues to grow. It's estimated that over $1 trillion leave our country every year in payment for illegal drugs. There have been proposals to legalize some illegal drugs and tax the sale of drugs to increase the flow of taxes to government and stop parts of the illegal drug trade, but this would create a whole new set of problems.

When you have a problem the best solution is to control the problem by managing the part of the problem over which you have the most control. The element of U.S. Drug Trafficking that we have control over is the U.S. dollar, the government prints them, they guarantee them, and they dispose of them.

What if next Friday it was announced that next Monday we will be changing the color of all U.S. paper currencies from green to pink , and you had one week to present any green U.S. currency that you had in your position to your local bank for exchange into pink currency or your green currency would be of no value. You, with a valid ID, could present up to $10,000 in green currency at your local bank and receive a like amount of pink currency. Your name and Social Security number would be entered into a national database with your exchanged amount thus making it impossible for you to go from bank to bank redeeming green for pink. If you had more then $10,000 to exchange you would have to explain and verify where you got it; which could be done with your last year's tax return or other supporting paperwork. This would not affect any bank deposits, brokerage deposits, or valid business accounts.

Now let's assume you're active in the U.S. Drug Trade, you grow marijuana out in that field behind your house, and you have a spare bedroom in your home full of $20.00, $50.00 and $100.00 dollar bills totaling one million dollars. What are you going to do with all your money next week? Alternatively, a better question: the week after next when it's worthless?

What if you're a Mexican Drug Lord, and you have a truck loaded with 200 pounds of cocaine scheduled for shipment to the U.S. in two days; are you going to ship it to the U.S. or are you going to reroute it to France? How are you going to pay your suppliers now that all those one hundred dollar bills are worthless?

What if you're a street dealer, and you have $100,000 stashed under a floor board in your bedroom. You may have nine friends who are willing to go to the bank for you, but then they're going to have to tie themselves to that $10,000 and had better report it on their 1040 next April, or they might find themselves sitting across form an IRS agent.

It is estimated that 80% of the one hundred dollar bills printed in the United States make their way out of the United States within two weeks as a part of the black market trade. What if you're holding 100,000 of those one hundred bills in Columbia; what are you going to do with them?

This is the Illegal Drug Trade, part of the Black Market, controlled for the most part by organized crime. Print some pink money this month, blue next month, and purple the month after and those boys will find someone else's back yard to play in, but that's only half the opportunity. There's the Underground Economy.

The Underground Economy revolves around illegal aliens. The Underground Economy, estimated to be 10% of our GDP or $1.4 trillion are the unreported payments to the nannies, construction workers, landscapers, and others that are paid off the books. The IRS estimated that they are losing $400 million in tax revenues to the Underground Economy. It's estimated that as much as 50% of these funds are being sent back home, mostly to Mexico and South America. What would happen if next week all that money south of the boarder became worth less than toilet paper? Do you think that would have an effect on the number of illegal boarder crossings? Do you think this would open up some jobs for unemployed United States citizens? Do you think the boarder traffic would have more going south then north?

What would happen to the bank robbery or kidnapping business? Why would you rob a bank or kidnap someone if the money that you walked off with after risking your life could become worthless next Monday? Maybe instead you'd become a landscaper or construction worker.

This is a simple solution to a complex problem, and it won't be well received by some who make their living trading in drugs or employing illegal's; but it's time that we stop the flow of money out of our country and recognize that by just printing more money, we are not solving our problems. In addition we have to stop using 390 million gallons of gasoline to power our automobile habit and use the natural gas that we already own.

These are just of few of the elements of The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program which can be found in full on my blog.

Do us a favor, copy this article and send it to our President, your Senator and Representative and ask one question. “Why aren't we changing the color of our currency next week?”

Is It Time To Pick Your New Financial Advisor?

If you're like 80% of the people in the world you don't have as much in your investment accounts as you did one year ago. Whether you should change Financial Advisors or not, now is a good time to asses the performance of your current advisor and decide if it is time to make a change. I want to make it clear that I am speaking of a Financial Advisor not an Investment Advisor, there are less then 5% of the world's population that should be seeking the services of an Investment Advisor. The investment markets are not a place for most of us to turn to make money; they are a place for us to preserve the capital that we've accumulated and grow that capital at reasonable rates of return. Too many of us lost a sizable amount of our capital in the 2001 Tech Bubble only to loose more in the Sub Prime Bubble because we were working with an Investment Advisor not a Financial Advisor.

The first step in choosing your new Financial Advisor is for you to decide what you want from your advisor. Here are some suggestions:
• Help me preserve the capital I have been able to accumulate and grow it at a conservative rate of return.
• Help me to live within my means and set an investment strategy based on my needs and goals.
• Help me protect my family form the loss of my earning ability or my death.
• Help me and my family achieve our financial goals prior to retirement.
• Help me accumulate enough to enjoy a comfortable retirement.
• Help me assess my need for long term care insurance.
• Help me establish and estate plan.

Once you know what you want from your advisor you'll need to find a qualified provider. As in all professions the first qualification you need to look for is education. Your potential advisors will have a Series 6 or a Series 7 securities license as well as an insurance license and a variable products license. A Series 6 allows them to sell mutual funds and a Series 7 allows then to sell stocks, bonds, options as well as mutual funds. A Series 7 is a more in-depth course of study then the Series 6, so I'd eliminate anyone who doesn't have a Series 7 securities license.

Seventy percent of the people representing themselves as Financial Advisors stop their education beyond their licenses and their required annual continuing education credits. It's the other 30% of the advisors that you are looking for. These are the people with initials behind their names representing professional designations. At the top of this designation pecking order is the CFP (Chartered Financial Advisor) designation. A CFP is comparable to a master's degree in financial planning; it takes three years of study and at least three years of practical experience. To find a CFP in your community go to: (http://www.cfp.net/search) Other designations like the ChFC (Chartered Financial Consultant) and CLU (Chartered Life Underwriter) are focused on specific segments of the financial advisory field. These designations are comparable to Board Certifications in the medical fields, and I personally would not put my finances in the hands of anyone who doesn't take their profession seriously enough to seek all the education that is available. This search can leave you with a list of three to three hundred depending on the size of your community. I suggest that you check www.BestofUS.com, a website that lists the best of ten professions across the United States. This should help you bring your list down to a manageable number of qualified advisors.

Next go to the NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) website and look up your short list of qualified advisors.
(http://www.finra.org/Investors/ToolsCalculators/BrokerCheck/index.htm) Here you'll be able find out your potential advisors work history, license history and if they have had any legal or disciplinary action brought against them. We've gone through some pretty tough financial times over the past ten years and a lot of good advisors have been sued, so use this information as a means of asking your potential advisors questions. “Can you tell me what these issues are about?” Now Google your short list and see what you find; you'll be surprised what you'll learn.

At this point, you need to sit down with those left on your short list. Here is a list of questions that you should ask.
• What is your approach to financial planning? If they don't address the “Help me” points above their not a Financial Advisor. If they start talking about Managed Accounts, Sector Investing, Momentum, Technical verse Fundamentals, or Option Strategies your talking to and Investment Advisor.
• What was your book of business worth on March 1, 2008 and what is your book of business worth today? Can I see supporting reports? Their going to ask to see your finances, it's fair for you to ask to see theirs and if it's down more then 25% you're in the wrong place.
• How are you paid? There are only three possible answers here; commissions, asset base compensation, or fees. Most will be a combination of the three possibilities; the one that you want to watch out for is commissions. Commissions can create a conflict of interest. Asset based compensation means as your assets grow their compensation grows or as your assets go down so does their compensation. I liked that it results in a common objective. Fees will involve special work like a financial plan or a research project relative to your specific situation, and that's fair.
• How often will we meet to review my situation? This needs to be at least twice a year.
• Tell me about yourself. How long have your been in the business? Do your have any professional designations? Have you had any legal or disciplinary action taken against you? What is your employment and education background? Have you written any books or articles that I can read? You know all the answers, just sit back and judge.

If you'll follow this process you'll find the Best Financial Planner for you. You may end up with the person that you've been using, but you now know they are qualified to provide you with the service that you need from your new Financial Advisor.

Choosing a Financial Advisor can be as important as choosing a doctor, so do your homework and then take responsibility for your decision. As in managing your health you have to take an active role in the management of your finances; stay involved and understand everything.

If you could manipulate the intelligence of your children; “Would you?”

With our increasing knowledge of genes and how they predetermine who our children will become and where they will fit into society the manipulation of our children’s intelligence as well as physical abilities will become a part of choosing your partner in the future.

Intelligence is the mental capability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, learn and understand new material, and profit from past experience. Intelligence is the primary element that determines where we fit in to society, how we will make our living, and what you social economic status will be.

History
Intelligence tests date back to the late 19th century; the works of Sir Frances Galton explored the difference in the accomplishments of generations of the English aristocracy. Alfred Binet expanded on Galton's work to develop a test to be administered to French children to assist in predicting their academic success. American psychologist, Lewis Terman modified Binet's test in the early 1900's to make it applicable for adults and establishing standards for performance relative to age. He also developed a scoring system which he called the intelligence quotient or IQ.

Today's IQ tests no longer compute scores using the IQ formula. Today's tests give a score that measures the participant's performance relative to the average performance of others of the same age who have taken the test referred to as “ratio IQ”; others are based on a mathematical transformation of a raw score on the IQ Test based on the rank of that section in a normalization sample referred to a “deviance IQ score”. Under the “deviance method” the average score is arbitrarily set at 100, thus those scoring above the average of 100 are considered more intelligent up to genius and those who score below 100 are considered less intelligent.
The two scoring methods yield similar results near the middle of the bell curve, but the older, “ratio IQs”, yielded far higher scores for the intellectually gifted — which explains how Marilyn vos Saeant achieved a “ratio IQ” score of 228, a score that is unattainable under the “deviance method” of scoring.

Recent Findings
The current consensus is that general human intelligence is based on the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain. It is believed that the frontal lobes, specifically the lateral prefrontal cortex, are critical for fluid intelligence. A 2006 study of 307 children which measured the size of their brain then measured verbal and non-verbal skills indicated that there is a relationship between IQ and the structure of the cortex.

Over the past 100 years, IQ scores have increased at an average rate of three IQ points per decade in most parts of the world. This has been explained by better nutrition, smaller families, better education, and heredity. It is believed that 50% to 80% of a childs intelligence is attributable to the childs parents and the genes that they passed on to the child. Studies of twins raised apart substantiate these beliefs. It had been widely believed that through education we can improve upon our intelligence, but this is often not the case. Vocabulary size, for example, is more effected by heredity than by environment even though every word that one knows has to be learned. In our society words are readily available to everyone and the number of words that we learn has more to do with our genetic predisposition to learn then the vocabulary of the people around us.

The genetic effects on intelligence increase as the child ages, starting at 20% contribution in infancy and growing to 80% in adulthood, supporting the theory that genes provide an inherent propensity to learn and and retain.

However, social economic conditions do have an effect on developed IQ. It is believed that the potential is passed within the genes but social economic conditions determine if the inherent potential is reached. Within an impoverished family up to 60% of variance in IQ can be attributed to environment while the contribution of genes is zero. On the other end of the social economic spectrum the opposite is true; family environment has little to do with IQ variance while inherited genes are the primary determining factor of IQ.

A recent study, April 2008, at the University of Michigan and Bern suggests that intelligence can be marginally altered and changed over time through the use of challenging activities thus producing changes in gene expression patterns of the brain. Musical study at a young age tends to increase the potential for full achievement of IQ potential. If this proves to be true it would be contrary to prior held beliefs about the development of intelligence.

Studies conducted in Scotland of 11,282 individuals between the 1950's and 1960's support the belief that people with higher IQ's live longer, tend to not suffer from sever depression, schizophrenia or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. More recent studies, 2004, show that tests of lower cognitive ability at a young age can serve as an early predictor of a propensity for the development of Alzheimer's and dementia in a persons later years.

Putting this all together would indicate that a childs intelligence level is primarily determined by the intelligence levels of his or her mother and father and grandparents. From that point on the child will benefit from being part of a small affluent family that feeds them well and places them in a challenging educational environment.

Once IQ is developed to its fullest potential it becomes a good predictor of success in acidemic pursuits and some career paths. IQ does have substantial influence on academic achievement, while academic achievement has little influence on future IQ scores. IQ relates well to auditory,linguistic, memory, and academic achievement levels, but is less relevant when body speed, eye-hand coordination, and hard work are needed for job performance.

IQ Scores as a predictor of future income is highly debated. It is not difficult to point to and individual or group of individuals with low IQ's yet earning extremely high incomes. This can usually be explained by some other inheritable trait that they have nourished thus maximizing that traits potential. With few exceptions it is generally agreed that it is important to have an above average IQ score to achieve above average income but highest IQ scores do not necessarily come with higher income levels. Below you'll find the average earnings of some of the career paths that might be considered and the level of education required to make entry into the career field. The incomes shown represent the average income with a deviation of 40% plus or minus for highest in the field to the lowest in the field.

Career Degree Needed Average Earningsdiv>
Banking Masters $180,000
Dentist DDS $125,000
Dermatoligest MD $225,000
Heart Surgeon MD $365,000
Orthopedic Surgeon MD $405,000
Plastic Sergeon MD $325,000
University Dean Masters $135,000
College President Masters $200,000
Attorney Intelectial Property LD $200,000
Judge LD $150,000
Areospace Engineer Bachelors $110,000
Actor Performer None $50,000
Professional Athelete None $30,000
Director of Government Affears Bachelors $115,000
Plant Manager None $125,000
Software Engineer Bachelors $110,000
Geophysicist Bachelors $145,000
Petroleum Geologist Bachelors $145,000
Airline Pilot Bachelors $110,000
Nerosurgeon MD $467,000
Small Business Owner None $258,000

Taking An Active Role in Molding An Intelligent Generation

Intelligence is the mental capability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, learn and understand new material, and profit from past experience. In tomorrows world intelligence will be increasingly important in determining where our children and grandchildren will find their place in our global society. For the past century we have measured intelligence in IQ, or Intelligence coefficient. As parents and grandparents we need to take an active role in shaping the intelligence of our current and future children and grandchildren. It is currently believed that IQ is affected by two factors; inherited genes and family environment.


History of Measuring Intelligence
Intelligence tests date back to the late 19th century; the works of Sir Frances Galton explored the difference in the accomplishments of generations of the English aristocracy. Alfred Binet expanded on Galton's work to develop a test to be administered to French children to assist in predicting their academic success. American psychologist, Lewis Terman modified Binet's test in the early 1900's to make it applicable for adults and establishing standards for performance relative to age. He also developed a scoring system which he called the intelligence quotient or
IQ.

Today's IQ tests no longer compute scores using the IQ formula. Today's tests give a score that measures the participant's performance relative to the average performance of others of the same age who have taken the test referred to as “ratio IQ” others are based on a mathematical transformation of a raw score on the IQ Test based on the rank of that section in a normalization sample referred to a “deviance IQ score”. Under the “deviance method” the average score is arbitrarily set at 100, thus those scoring above the average of 100 are considered more intelligent up to genius and those who score below 100 are considered less intelligent.
The two scoring methods yield similar results near the middle of the bell curve, but the older, “ratio IQs”, yielded far higher scores for the intellectually gifted — which explains how Marilyn vos Saeant achieved a “ratio IQ” score of 228, a score that is unattainable under the “deviance method” of scoring.

Recent Findings on Influancing Intelligence
Over the past 100 years, IQ scores have increased at an average rate of three IQ points per decade in most parts of the world. This has been explained by better nutrition, smaller families, better education, and heredity. It is believed that 50% to 70% of a childs intelligence is attributable to the childs parents and the genes that they passed on to the child. Studies of twins raise apart substantiate these beliefs.

Vocabulary size, for example, is more effected by heredity than by environment even though every word that one knows has to be learned. In our society words are readily available to everyone and the number of words that we learn has more to do with our genetic predisposition to learn then the vocabulary of the people around us.

However, social economic conditions do have an effect on developed IQ. Within an impoverished family up to 60% of variance in IQ can be attributed to environment while the contribution of genes is zero. On the other end of the social economic spectrum the opposite is true; family environment has little to do with IQ variance while inherited genes are the primary determining factor of IQ.

A recent study, April 2008, at the University of Michigan and Bern suggests that intelligence can be altered and changed over time through the use of challenging activities thus producing changes in gene expression patterns of the brain. If this proves to be true it would be contrary to prior held beliefs about the development of intelligence.

Studies conducted in Scotland of 11,282 individuals between 1950 and 1960 support the belief that people with higher IQ's live longer, tend to not suffer from sever depression, schizophrenia or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. More recent studies, 2004, show that tests of lower cognitive ability at a young age can serve as an early predictor of a propensity for the development of Alzheimer's and dementia in a persons later years.

The current consensus is that general human intelligence is based on the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain. It is believed that the frontal lobes, specifically the lateral prefrontal cortex, are critical for fluid intelligence. A 2006 study of 307 children which measured the size of their brain then measured verbal and non-verbal skills indicated that there is a relationship between IQ and the structure of the cortex.

An Active Role in Our Future Generations
For centuries in Eastern and Middle Eastern societies parents and grandparents have taken an active role in choosing their children's mates. In most cases this practice was followed to maintain or improve social-economic position. With our increasing understanding of the development of intelligence choosing a mate based on intelligence may become a more widespread practice in the future. In Western societies we have tended to marry those that we attend school with, work with and socialize with. We have chosen our mates based on looks, common interests , sexual attraction and compatibility. It would be wise to add IQ score to this list.

The Best of U.S. Tax Act and Stimulus Program

Last year our government spent $150 billion on a Stimulus Program in an effort to increase consumer spending and hopefully bring our economy back into a growth mode. In fact consumer spending did increase by 5% in May 2008 but most of that can be attributed to escalating fuel and food prices. Those Stimulus dollars that didn’t go to fuel and food went towards flat screen TV’s or other foreign made merchandise resulting in more of our American dollars leaving our shores.

In late 2008 we that tax payers agreed to give the financial industry $700 billion to clear up their bad debt and put them in a position where they could get back into the lending business thus stimulating the economy. We now know that the $700 billion was a drop in an ocean of bad loans and the banks are still in trouble, thus unable to extend credit to others because of their own financial problems. The talk is that possibly the banks need to be nationalized which means that we the taxpayers will assume all of their self manufactured bad loans and our children and grand children will be faced with bring the U.S. banking system back to solvency.

In the past week we the taxpayers stepped forward again to fund a new recovery program with a price tag of $1 trillion. This time we are told that these funds will not go to the banks, they will go to create jobs. This is certainly something that our country needs, as jobs have been leaving our shores for decades only to be accelerated as industry, retail, sales and construction have come to a stop in the United States over the past quarter.

Over the past six months we have recognized that the financial structure of the best capitalistic system know to mankind is failing. It’s hard to understand because of its size and scope, but if you think of the problem relative to your household it’s simple. You’ve been spending more then you’ve been bringing in, you’ve been using credit like you’ve been using water; as if there was no end to the supply. Now the tap has been turned off, you lay off the gardener, the maid, and the cook. The bank is at the door and your cars have been repossessed. What do you do? You get a second job and mom goes to work. Simply put you cut your expenses and you maximize your income.

This is exactly what our government has to do. Cut all the pork out of the federal budget and raise taxes. The budget is being addressed and President Obama says he is going to raise taxes on anyone making over $250,000 per year. This is a start but will not get us out of debt; but there is a way. The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program will increase the federal tax on gasoline by $3.00 per gallon, put a $2.00 per pack tax on cigarettes and a $1.00 per six-pack of beer and fifth of whisky. In addition we will shut down the illegal drug trade and the underground economy.

We consume 390 million gallons of gasoline per day, 50 million packs of cigarettes per day, and 21 million gallons of beer per day. In one year a $3.00 gas tax would generate $427 billion a year ($.4.7 trillion in 10 years), a $2.00 cigarette tax will generate $36 billion a year ($3.6 trillion in 10 years) and a $1.00 six-pack beer tax will generate $7.4 billion per year (7.4 trillion in 10 years). This is a total annual increase in income of $447 billion. These funds should be allocated to payoff our debt, and get our nation back on its feet. We could address, national health insurance, we could have the best schools in the world, fund renewable energy research and we could fund cancer, Parkinson’s, and stem cell research.

In conjunction with the increase in these taxes we need fund The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program. A $150 billion program offering consumers a free U.S. made automobile that gets 36 MPG or better when they turn in their gas guzzler for destruction. This program would take 7.5 million gas guzzlers off the road reducing fuel consumption by up to 833 gallons per year per auto or 6.25 billion gallons total. This would eliminate our need for 320,512,800 barrels of oil resulting in $45 billion not leaving our country each year; thus the program investment would be recouped in just over three years. The auto replacement program represents 6% of the U.S.’s passenger cars and would reduce our nations overall fuel consumption by 4%, each year the program is in place. The Best of U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program, over 10 years, would reduce our oil consumption by 40%; we currently produce 25% of our need. With the added drilling in Anwar and the Gulf we could be producing 50% of our need within 10 years leaving less 10% needed from offshore; which we could get from Canada and Mexico. These figures do not account for the millions of Americans who would switch to more fuel efficient vehicles outside of The Best of U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program as a result of purposely pushing the price of gas up above $5.50 per gallon.

U.S. auto makers sold 17 million cars in 2007 and sold 11 million cars in 2008 resulting in the probability of bankruptcy for one or more of the three. Under The Best of U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program each manufacture would be challenged to produce a four passenger auto and a six passenger mini van that achieved 36 MPG or better. The winner of the challenge would be guaranteed the sale of 7.5 million vehicles each year of the program. With gasoline selling for over $5.50 per gallon it will be only a matter of time before we are powering our automobiles with natural gas or electricity generated by natural gas rather than coal.

The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program will also address national health care. Today only 60% of U.S. citizens are covered by health insurance and yet our hospitals are over crowed. The current health care industry employs 14 million of us and accounts for $2.6 trillion of our gross national product. With national health care, which would provide health care for the other 40% of us, we could easily create another 5 million jobs. National health care is estimated to cost $36 million a year which could be paid for with our cigarette and beer tax. If this falls short we can put a tax on obesity by putting a federal tax on fast food.

The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program will also address the U.S. Black Market in illegal drugs and the Underground Economy which results in over $2 trillion leaving our country each year and over $400 million in evaded taxes. By introducing a program that regularly and unannounced changes the color of U.S. currency the incentive to accumulate illegal U.S. dollars will be thwarted; the drug trade will come to a halt and the flow of human traffic across our boarders will reverse directions.

Join me in encouraging President Obama and your Senators and Representatives to adopt The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program. Email them this post today!

Let’s take control of our economy, our energy needs and our health care; it’s easy if we have the will power to take control of our lives.

A Continuing Fight with Cancer

Today my wife and I spent the day at Emory’s Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta. This is the third time in the past six years that we have sat and waited for doctors to remove cancer from our daughter’s body. The first time in 2002 resulted in the amputation of her left foot. The last two times it’s been to remove cancer cells from her left lung. We have come to accept that we will be back in Crawford Long again, we just don’t know how soon and how often.

On one hand we feel lucky that she is getting such quality care that the cancer is being extracted before it has an opportunity to take a strong hold and take her life. I tell her that she’s lucky that she knows what’s going on in her body; most of us don’t. On the other hand we question how often and for how long can she endure major surgery and recovery.

I hear of people who say “stop with the treatment and let what is to happen to happen.” I can’t imagine they have much to live for making such a decision, but I’m not in their shoes. I ask myself, how much pain and suffering would I be willing to endure to keep living?

This ordeal has taught us a lot of lessons and opened our eyes to many inequities. The main lesson that we’ve learned over the past six years is to be proactive and to seek out and find the best of doctors and the best care. This doesn’t mean just going to any doctor, it means doing research and finding the best doctor available for the care that you or your family needs. With the internet this is a doable task. Neither best doctors nor best care would have been available if we had not had good health insurance. I read that 40% of Americans are without health insurance. I know in my heart if we had not had health insurance our daughter would be dead today, we wouldn’t know our grandson and we wouldn’t have had the past six years with them.

I don’t think that what my family has experienced is all that uncommon. The hospital is so crowded that our daughter will be spending the night in the ICU even though she is recovering well and should be moved onto the main floor, but there are no rooms available on the main floor. But only 60% of us have medical insurance, what are the other 40% doing or are they here at Crawford Long and not paying? Are they getting the preventive care that we are getting or are they merely fending off disasters?

Yet there are those among us that feel that to have a national insurance program would be wrong because it would result in a reduction in the quality of our medical care. Are we Ok with treating them for heart attackes, gun shoot wounds, and injuries; but not the progression of cancer or diabetes?

Is that to say that they are Ok with 40% of American families having to allow their daughters bodies be overrun with cancer? Can we be so selfish?

A Day at the Hospital

Nita and I got Aidan up and took him to school this morning, he asked where Mommy and Daddy were and Nita told him the his Mommy and Daddy were at the hospital for Mommy's operation. Shay and Justin had been preparing him for this and it appears that to Aidan it's just another day at the office.

We met Justin in the Emory waiting room about 9:15. We got word from Dr. Miller at 10:00 AM that the operation went well and that she was in Intensive Care. “You should be able to see her is 40 minutes.” Luckily Emory has a guest wireless service so I can pass the time on the computer while Nita and Justin read.

The three of us sit in the same waiting room that we sat in eighteen months ago and ask each other. “What happened last time?” I hope this never becomes so regular that we have the procedure fresh in mind.

We were able to go into the ICU at 10:45 AM and Shannon was much better off then she was when we went through this 18 months ago. She was in less pain, or I should say she was feeling less pain. The nurse told us the there were no beds on the floor so she would be staying in the ICU for a while maybe until tomorrow.

All in all the operation went well and the recovery is progressing. Our job will become one of looking after Aidan, he’s in pre-school this morning, and keeping the house together while Justin focuses on Shannon.

It’s interesting the turns that life takes and how we adapt and how we support each other. Six months from now this will be just another memory.

Is It Important to Have a High IQ to be a Good President?

The term good president is up for interpretation, so for the purpose of this article I’m going to allow the historians and presidential scholars determine what a good President is C-Span released it’s list on Presidents Day of the most popular presidents as compiled by 46 historians, placing Abraham Lincoln in first place and George W. Bush in 36th place out of our 42 past presidents. Here is a list of the top ten along with our more recent presidents and their IQ scores as reported in recent study in the Journal: Political Psychology.

1. Abraham Lincoln -145
2. George Washington – 130
3. FDR -141
4. Teddy Roosevelt -144
5. Harry Truman – 125
6. JFK -156
7. Thomas Jefferson -160
8. Dwight Eisenhower -131
9. Woodrow Wilson -148
10. Ronald Reagan – 128
11. Lyndon Johnson – 125
15. Bill Clinton – 154
18. George H. Bush – 128
22. Gerald Ford – 124
25. Jimmy Carter -149
27. Richard Nixon – 129
36. George W. Bush – 121

It appears that there is little correlation between popularity and intelligence even though the lowest IQ score and lowest in popularity is held by the same president on this list. What we do know is that the popularity numbers will change. Harry Truman, for example had a lower approval rating when he left office then George W. Bush but Harry is now ranked at number 5 in current popularity.

The numbers that I would like to see change on this list is the IQ numbers. The world has become far to complicated to have a person with an average IQ (100 to 125) running the show. There are important decisions being made that are effecting far to many people to have anyone less then a skilled chess player (IQ of 150 to 180) in the position of President of the United States.

Over the past eight years decisions about invading countries, the reductions of qualifications to purchase homes, the structures of financial instruments, and the monitoring of our financial systems have had disastrous global consequences.
We scrutinize our prospective presidents religious beliefs, prior use of drugs, marital status, sexual orientation, prior affiliations and prior experience. We dig into every aspect or their past lives but we don’t investigate their ability to make good decisions; their intelligence. For our own survival let’s make an IQ test a part of the application process for future Presidents of the United States.